FORMICARI^. 189 



have regular divisions of laborers, numbers mounting the trees 

 and cutting oft" the leaves in irregularly' rounded pieces the size 

 of a shilling, another rela}- carrying them off as they fall." 

 "The heavily laden fellows, as they came trooping in, all de- 

 posited their load in a heap close to the mound. About the 

 mound itself were a vast number of workers of a smaller size. 

 The very large-headed ones were not engaged in leaf-cutting, 

 nor seen in the processions, but were only to be seen on dis- 

 turbing the nest." Bates also says, "I found, after removing 

 a little of the surface, three burrows, each about an inch in 

 tUamet(;r ; half a foot downward, all three united in one tubular 

 burrow about four inches in diameter. To the bottom of this I 

 could not reach when 1 probed with a stick to the depth of four 

 or live feet. This tube was perfectly- smooth and covered with 

 a vast number of workers of much smaller size than those oc- 

 cupied in conveying the leaves ; they were unmixed with any 

 of a larger size. Afterwards, on probing lower into the bur- 

 row, up came, one by one, several gigantic fellows, out of all 

 proportion, larger than the largest of those outside, and which 

 I could not haAC supposed to belong to the same species. Be- 

 sides the greatly enlarged size of the head, etc., they have an 

 ocellus in the middle of the forehead ; this latter feature, added 

 to their startling appearance from the cavernous depths of the 

 formicarium, gave them quite a Cyclopean character." 



Of another species, the (Ec. sexdentata, Mr. Smith quotes 

 from Rev. Hamlet Clark, that at Constancia, Brazil, the pro- 

 prietor of a plantation used everj- means to exterminate it and 

 failed. " Sometimes in a single night it will strip an orange or 

 lemon tree of its leaves; a ditch of water around his garden. 

 which quite keeps out all other ants, is of no use. This spe- 

 cies carries a mine under its bed without any difficulty. In- 

 deed, I have been assured again and again, by sensible men, 

 that it has undermined, in its progress thi'ough the country, the 

 great river Paraiba. At any rate, without anything like a nat- 

 ural or artificial bridge, it appears on the other side and con- 

 tinues its course." This testimony is confirmed by Mr. 

 Lincecum (Proceedings of Aca(]emy of Natural Sciences, 

 Philadelphia, 1867, p. 24) in an interesting account of the GEc. 

 Texioia, which he has observed for eighteen years. lie states 



